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Flashcards

Prepare 26 flash cards, each one with a letter of the alphabet in lower case (it is also possible to buy ready-made letter flashcards, as well as cards that show common letter combinations such as‘ow’, ‘ee’, ‘ea’etc).

Show the letters one at a time (not all at once, introduce around 7 each time) and say the sound the letter makes. For the letter ‘c’ use the/k/sound as this will be more useful initially.

Let the children hear the sound and encourage them to repeat it.

Practise by:

• holding up a letter and asking ‘Is this a /b/?’ or ‘What is this?’
• pinning the letters on the board and asking children to run up one at a time and ‘slap’ the letter you call out (phonically).You can use plastic fly swats for this.
• asking the children if they know any words that begin with this sound. This is great for using what they already know and making the strong connection between words, letters and sounds.

Internalising the letters

Especially if the children’s own language has a different alphabet it is important that they become familiar with the shapes of letters and can begin manipulating them. The following holistic (they require using the body and space rather than pencil and paper) activities help to give children a strong imprint of the shape of letters in their mind’s eye.It is also a good idea to have tasks that do not require the use of a pencil or pen. When children are beginning using these it’s hard work – they have to grip the pencil properly which is hard and moving it across the page is physically challenging (try writing with the hand you don’t normally write with to get a sense of the challenge).


Body letters


Ask children to make themselves into the shape of given letters.‘make yourself an ‘s’ etc’

Children contort their bodies into what they think the letter looks like.

You can model this easily by showing them an ‘x’ by standing with your feet apart and your arms in the air and wide apart. Or you can show a ‘T’ by standing with your feet together and your arms stretched out to the sides.It doesn’t actually matter what the children look like – the point is the mental process they go through – imagining the shape of the word and attempting to move into that shape.

Or ask children to make a letter and the whole class has to try to recognise what the letter is.

Tracing letters


Ask students to shut their eyes and with your finger trace a letter on their hand or back. They must tell you what this is. They can play the game in pairs. There may be giggles from the ticklish in the class, but the activity requires them to ‘see’ the letter in their mind’s eye and it’s great fun, too.

Air writing


Before writing letters on paper, get all the students to stand up and stand at the front of the class with your back to them. Using your writing hand draw a big letter in the air saying its sound at the same time. Get the kids to stand up and copy you, moving their arms to form the letter in the air.

Letter sculptures


Give out plasticene (fun clay) to all the children (cooked spaghetti and pipe cleaners work too). Ask the children to make certain letters (or words). They have to concentrate of the shape of the letter and its proportions.

The children can choose their own letter and make a big one out of plasticene or card, then stick it on a large piece of card. Give out magazines and newspapers and let the children look and find either words or pictures of things that begin with the same letter. They cut these out and create a collage with their big letter. Decorate the classroom with these posters.

You can also give out paper plates with one of the following on – shaving foam, flour, icing sugar, sand..Children ‘write’ on the plates.

Recognition games


Games are motivating and help make language memorable, so try to think of lots of fun ways to practise the new letters and sounds that you are introducing to the children.

Run and point


Pin up the letters that you have introduced to the class so far on the walls around the classroom at a height the children can reach. Nominate one students and say‘Juan, run and point to /s/’. The child must look around and find the correct letter and run up to it and touch it or point to it. (Model the activity so that the children are clear about what they have to do).

You could then turn this into a race. Divide the class into two groups. They stand in two lines at the front of the class or down the center of the room (it’s great if you can move furniture to the sides of the room). The children at the front of each line are the runners. You say the sound of the letter and the one to reach and touch it first is the winner. They then go to the back of the line and the next two children are the runners for the next letter. It is fine if other children in the team help the runner – it’s not a test but a means of helping children learn the sound-letter link.

What begins with /b/?


Ask the question with all the letters the children have been introduced to. They can tell you any words they know that begin with that sound. This is great for them to make their own connections between the letter and the sound. You may be surprised at how many words they know – even ones you haven’t introduced in class.




Hold up the letter


Get the children to make cards with the letters they know. Call out a sound and the children have to hold up the corresponding letter. This game allows all the children to join in and to focus on processing the sound-letter link without having to produce any language.

Recognizing the letters


Produce handouts like this:

n h h n m

o a o d g

Children have to recognise which is the same letter and simply circle it or maybe colour over it. The letters are actually very similar in shape, so it’s important that children can differentiate between them.

Copying


There are many good books that allow children to practise writing letters and words. They simply copy by following the arrows that show them which way their pen/pencil must move. After having done the air, body, plasticene activities it is good to move onto paper and allow the children lots of practice with holding a pencil and making the shapes. It is not easy to begin with and they need lots of practice to control their hand and follow the shape of the letter. In my experience children enjoy the task and concentrate hard on producing their letters.

Words


It is a short journey from letters to words.

Introducing words

Show pictures and words together and sound out the phonics.

e.g. /c/ /a/ /t/ = cat

Move you finger under each letter as you sound it. Remember not all languages are written in the same direction. Encourage the children to read with you.

Word building

Word tiles


get the children to make 26 letter tiles out of cardboard (old cereal boxes will do) by simply cutting out small squares and writing each letter on them.

Each child has their letters spread out in front of them. Call out a word they have learnt e.g. cat and the first one to find the right tiles and put them in order must put their hand up. This encourages quick eye movement over the letters, recognition and letter combining.

Races


for fun you could challenge the children working in pairs or threes (to encourage cooperation and peer teaching) to make as many words as possible in a specified time.

As each child has their own letters, they can play with them at home or if they finish an activity early and see how many words they can make. Later they can move into building short sentences.

Work sheets


You can produce easy worksheets like this:

c_t d_g p_n

Children fill in the gaps. If you can add a picture of the word too: it will make it all the more meaningful.

atc = gdo = npe =

Children unjumble the letters to make the word. You could also do this on the board with children coming up and doing the activity one at a time.

Word searches


These are good for children to recognise words within a jumble of other words. It makes them concentrate and ‘see’ words on the page.

Children have to circle or colour the key words in the grid.

 

Teaching Vocabulary

To children (5 – 11 year olds – though of course you will be able to adapt the activities for younger or older students)

Words are the building blocks of language and having a good supply of them is very important for students right from the beginning of their English learning.

With young students vocabulary learning is relatively easy as the words they need (the words they would use in their mother tongue too) are concrete – things they can see, touch, taste, play with etc; so it easy for the meaning of the words to be made apparent without resorting to translation or complicated explanations. How better to teach the word ‘apple’ than to show the children an apple or a picture of an apple?

The sooner students are able to communicate ideas in English, the more motivated they will be, so giving them a bank of vocabulary to draw on is necessary – starting with nouns and adjectives.

Although children seem to learn new words very quickly, they will also forget quickly, so it is very important to give them lots of practice of vocabulary to help them remember.

Presenting new vocabulary


At the presentation stage it is vital that the meaning of new words is clear. I am a great advocate of avoiding mother tongue in the English classroom. Translation is unnecessary and indirect and also creates a dependence in students that is later hard to cure.

To present concrete vocabulary: a staged approach
e.g. Fruit

1. bring in a bag of different fruit – six to eight items at a time is plenty
2. pick up one fruit and say the word clearly a number of times, encourage the students to repeat the word
3. go through all the words in this way
4. return regularly to a word they have already been introduced to and check they have - - - remembered it e.g. pick up a banana and say ‘an apple?’ or ‘is this an apple?’, students should be able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ appropriately before you move on to check the vocabulary further.
5. then check that students have connected the new word to the meaning ask students individually ‘show me the banana’ etc. they will get actively involved in recognising the target word and indicating the object which it describes

!With vocabulary like animals pictures can be used.


!With verbs actions can be used – walk, sit, swim, hop etc and students encouraged to respond to the words with the appropriate actions – this is a great game.




Pronunciation/Drilling


Pupils must hear correct models of the target vocabulary in order to copy the pronunciation and to recognise the words later. They should also have plenty of practice of saying the words in order to get the pronunciation right and also to help memorisation. Choral repetition of words is useful but can become meaningless. To keep focussed on meaning, try choral repetition with ‘meaning’. Model and then get the children to repeat the words

normally

happily

sadly

in a surprised way

slowly

fast

When children repeat the words they have to do so conveying these emotions. Try it with the word chocolate. Children enjoy doing this and they do the activity meaningfully.

The other good thing about songs and chants is that the words are part of connected speech at a reasonably fast speed, so that weak forms and sound linking occur naturally.e.g. ‘knees and toes’ if said at the speed of the song have a natural link of the ‘s’ in knees and the ‘a’ in and, also the ‘a’ in and becomes a schwa and not a long sound.

Another fun way of getting children’s tongues around English sounds are tongue twisters:
e.g.

Yellow lorry, yellow lorry

Sally sells sea shells on the sea shore



Practice Activities


For food vocabulary and fun


Give each student a paper plate and ask them to design their favourite pizza by drawing the things they most like onto it. You can show them your own example with e.g. cheese, tomato, ham, pineapple and chocolate!


If they are pre-writers, they can tell you and each other what is on their pizza. If they are able to, they write the words of the ingredients next to them on the pizza. The ‘pizzas’ can be displayed on the classroom walls or can be used for a restuarant role play.

I went to market

For older students with a bigger bank of vocabulary.

For all vocabulary, alphabet awareness and fun.

Get students into a circle.

Start by saying: ‘I went to market and I bought an apple’.

The student to your right must repeat what you said and add another thing beginning with B.

Keep going until the last student has to remember 26 things bought in market!

Hangman/ parachutes

A quick and effective way of getting students to revise spelling of previously introduced words. A great warmer at the start of a lesson.


Think of a word students learnt last lesson e.g. mountain


Draw a picture of a person hanging onto a parachute. Draw eight dashes on the board – one for each letter of the word

 - - - - - - - -

One at a time students guess which letters may be in the word. If they are correct the letter is added to the word:

’N’ = _ _ _ n _ _ _ n

If they guess incorrectly, the teacher rubs out one of the parachute strings.


Students can guess the whole word at any time. But the teacher wins if all the parachute strings have gone before the word is guessed. Be generous with your strings!

Bingo

To practise word recognition


Collate a list of 20+ words the students know well – they can recognise them in their written and spoken form and know the meanings. Either write the words on the board or hand out a list of the words to the students. Students must choose any 9 of the words and write them onto a piece of paper that looks like this:

tiger	blue	pen
pizza	ten	orange
chair	book	girl

Teacher chooses words form the list at random and reads them aloud. If the student has the word on their paper they cross it out. As soon as a student has crossed out three words in a line – up, down or diagonally – they shout Bingo! And they are the winner.

Label the classroom

Children learn from everything around them and need constant reinforcement of language. A fun way of reinforcing the written form of the words for classroom objects like door, board, window etc is to label them.

• Write the words on card and as you teach the words stick them to the appropriate object
• Or get students to label the objects themselves
• One lesson jumble them up and get students to label them appropriately

Word search

Great for recognising written form. Helps concentration and is a real challenge. This is a grid containing ten sports words:

B

U

Y

N

X

A

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H

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BASEBALL	BOXING	CYCLING
FOOTBALL	GOLF	HOCKEY
JUDO	SKIING	SWIMMING
TENNIS

The first player to reach the star is the winner!